


gold light breaks

by zeldalookslonely



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 11:39:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldalookslonely/pseuds/zeldalookslonely
Summary: It’s dark, and Charles is grateful the weather is mild.  There’s a light breeze on his skin, mingling with sweat.  The street lights reflect off passing car windows, briefly illuminating the Captain shifting uncomfortably in the background.“Didn’t you make me less of a priority when you and Genevieve got together?” asks Jake, and time goes slow, sticky as molasses.“Yes,” he says, but suddenly the air is suffocating, and he’s not so quick to respond now, is he?  Not so jovial, not so confident, not anymore.  And just like that he has clarity; just like that he’s given up the game, if only to himself.





	gold light breaks

**Author's Note:**

> Sharply diverges from canon after season 5, ep 19.
> 
> Title from The National, Don't Swallow the Cap
> 
> _I have only two emotions_  
>  _Careful fear and dead devotion_

It’s dark, and Charles is grateful the weather is mild. There’s a light breeze on his skin, mingling with sweat. The street lights reflect off passing car windows, briefly illuminating the Captain shifting uncomfortably in the background.

“Didn’t you make me less of a priority when you and Genevieve got together?” asks Jake, and time goes slow, sticky as molasses. 

“Yes,” he says, but suddenly the air is suffocating, and he’s not so quick to respond now, is he? Not so jovial, not so confident, not anymore. And just like that he has clarity; just like that he’s given up the game, if only to himself.

…

Jake and Amy postpone their wedding the same day Genevieve dumps Charles. Some problem with the venue. 

“Some problem with the venue,” he says to Genevieve.

“Is there somebody else?” she asks.

“No,” he says, and it’s not precisely a lie. Not really. 

Genevieve goes still, staring at the ceiling. She has a smudge of deep green paint over her left eyebrow and his gut twists with affection. He wonders if she’s thinking of Nikolaj. “I love you,“ she says.

_But not enough to marry me. Not enough to_ choose _me._ He thinks of Eleanor’s cruelty. Rosa’s indifference. Vivian choosing Canada.

“It’s just not enough anymore,” says Genevieve. “It’s just not right.”

He knows.

…

Every word he’s ever said has been a plea, has been desperate; he’s been on his knees from the very start, _look at me, love me, keep me, tell me I’m special, please, please, please._ He’s never been able to hide it; what’s there to do but lean into it?

So when Jake shows up on his door step looking like a sad puppy, asking to crash on the couch, he says _sure buddy_ with the same combination of dread and eagerness he felt when he met Eleanor.

…

“AUNT GINA,” shrieks Nikolaj, racing around the splintering picnic table outside the small ice cream stand. “I’m a ROCKET!”

“He’s very resilient,” Charles tells Gina, not for the first time.

“Sure. Children of divorce are always resilient. We have to be.”

Charles swallows. “I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“You did,” she says, but seems to soften, stealing a bite of his avocado ice cream and twisting around to watch Nikolaj swoop around the empty parking lot, arms out. “And now young Jake is staying with you and your son. Did you get him his very own dog crate?”

“He’s on the couch.”

“I have a spare room, you know. Yet no requests for shelter have come my way. I guess Jake prefers your janky, dog-fur encrusted sofa.”

“Maybe you don’t have a very comforting presence,” he snipes, but she turns back and raises an eyebrow and he knows he’s given something away.

“I’m very comforting. In fact,” she says, cocking her head and maintaining meaningful eye contact, “I would kind of care if you died.”

“I’m touched,” he says, going for sarcasm, reaching for unaffected, but he has to bite his lip to keep from tearing up.

“Just… be careful,” she says, in a tone that would be harsh from anyone else but sounds strangely gentle from her. “Protect yourself. Protect your son. Don’t be so generous that you hurt your own heart.”

He clears his throat. Nods.

She just smirks.

…

Jake is an… adequate roommate. After one month of massive change, of shared custody, of shared grief and shared dodging around Jake’s loud and messy presence in their home, Nikolaj says, “Maybe we should make some rules. For Uncle Jake.” So they do.

…

“Number One,” says Nikolaj, somehow looming over Jake, who is characteristically sprawled over the entirety of their small sofa, “No letting the dogs loose outside for ‘funsies’.”

“Did he just make air quotes at me?” asks Jake, affronted. Charles nods solemnly.

“Number Two. “No using the oven.”

“That was an accident!” protests Jake, sitting up, finally allowing Nikolaj and Charles a place to sit.

“Number Three. No more yelling about Die Hard.”

“Or talking about it,” cuts in Charles, before Jake can open his mouth.

“Yep!” says Jake. “What else?”

Nikolaj looks at Charles, who nods encouragingly. “No more rubber ducks. No more mystery meat. No more sleeping all day. No more Taylor Swift. No more ‘helping’ me with my homework. No more baby wipes instead of showering. More milkshakes. More playing baseball with me and daddy.”

“And no more watering the violet,” adds Charles.

“Violet’s dead,” says Nikolaj.

“Okay,” says Jake, “but Taylor Swift-”

“It’s too much, Jake,” says Charles firmly. They’ve all heard every song hundreds of time by now.

Jake slumps back against the cushion. “I thought you were going to kick me out,” he says in a small voice.

“Nah,” says Nikolaj, grinning. “Can you make milkshakes now?”

A slow smile curls on Jake’s face. “Yeah, bud. Let’s have milkshakes.”

“It’s eight in the morning!” exclaims Charles, but Jake and Nikolaj give identical puppy dog eyes and Jake pats his knee. Charles clears his throat. “Just this once,” he says.

…

It’s hard, splitting custody. “Maybe I should have tried harder to make it work,” says Charles, on one of those nights he’s missing Nikolaj like he’d miss a limb.

Jake grabs for the remote and pauses the movie they’re watching. He looks at Charles carefully. “Do you want to get back together?”

“No,” Charles says. “But we had it all. Family. Love. And now…”

“What happened?”

“I’m still not sure. There were cracks, small ones. I couldn’t stop them from spreading and spreading.”

“I know the feeling,” says Jake.

“Do you want to get back together?”

“No. But… I miss my friend. And I miss the certainty I had, with her. About where my life was heading.”

“Maybe you can still be friends.”

“Maybe,” says Jake. He flops backward on the sofa and kicks his legs up into Charles’s lap. Charles finds himself scratching lightly up and down Jake’s calf before he even registers his own movement, before he can hold back, before he can force himself to redirect his thoughts. But Jake just settles in more comfortably. He hums to himself and grins up at Charles.

“Okay?” Charles asks.

Jake nods, shifts forward a little, hesitates. “You know,” he says, finally, and too casually, “you and Genevieve seem like really good co-parents. Do you mind it, when she calls Nikolaj on FaceTime while he’s here?”

“Of course not!”

“So you think she’d mind if you called while he’s with her?”

Ah. “I don’t want to bother them.”

“Genevieve isn’t Eleanor,” Jake says gently. “I think she’d understand.”

“Maybe, maybe,” Charles says, already fumbling for his phone. He’s sure nobody will answer, but Nikolaj picks up after only two rings.  
“Papa!” he says, lighting up on the tiny screen, and Genevieve calls hello pleasantly from off-screen, and Charles lets himself breathe, breathe, breathe.

…

Time keeps marching, shifting into a Brooklyn autumn, and Nikolaj gets the flu. He’s had the shot, but apparently it’s relatively common to get sick anyway, he explains to Jake, fretting. He’s due at the precinct in thirty minutes, Genevieve isn’t answering her phone, and his mother is in Florida, which exhausts his very short list of people trustworthy enough to watch his son.

“Relax,” says Jake. “I’m off today. I can stay home with him.”

“Um,” says Charles, flustered, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Jake frowns. “Charles. Rest, fluids, meds. I’m not going to let anything happen to Nikolaj. You… you do know that, don’t you?”

“Right. Of course. It’s just…”

“I know. But it’s okay. He’ll be okay.”

So Charles goes to work, and by the time Genevieve texts back in a panic, he tells her it’s covered, Jake’s watching Nikolaj. He wonders about her reaction, but she only says _she’ll take him tomorrow, poor baby, tell Jake thanks from her._ And that’s that.

The apartment is eerily dark and silent when he gets home; Jake is nowhere to be seen, and the panic is rising, rising, til he bursts into Nikolaj’s room to find him asleep in his bed, flanked by both dogs. Jake is conked out on the floor, slumped against the wall in a position that can’t possibly be comfortable.

“Jake,” he whispers softly, so he can watch him wake slowly, blinking.

“Charles,” he says, sleep-fuzzy, and gently pulls him down, sitting next to him, slumped against him, arm over his shoulder.

Charles takes his hand. Squeezes. “Thank you.”

“Any time,” he says, quickly, like it’s nothing. Like maybe he means it.

…

One night, Charles invites Rosa over to watch The Holiday.

“Jake, will you join?” he asks

“Can’t,” Jake says, “made dinner plans with Amy.”

Oh.

“Hmm,” says Rosa when he mentions it, “Yeah. It’s been how many months since the broken engagement? This is prime getting-back-together time.”

“You think?” Charles asks, tone purposefully light.

Rosa shrugs. “Who cares? They’ll be fine either way.”

Jake gets home late that night, long after Rosa has left, eyes glassy but smiling. Charles would ask, _should_ ask, but can’t say a word, could never. So he claps Jake’s shoulder, once, twice; lingers too long against the warmth there, and goes to bed.

…

It’s one of Nikolaj’s days with Genevieve, so Charles is alone at home, searching through the fridge to cobble something together for dinner, when Jake races inside the apartment.

“I brought pho!” he says, as if making a grand announcement, and Charles can’t decide whether he’s pained or amused at the mispronunciation. 

“It smells delicious! What’s the occasion?” Jake’s typically more of a room-temp pizza or day-old doughnut type of take-out consumer.

Jake pauses, then shrugs, dishing out soup and sorting through all the add-ins. “Maybe there isn’t one. I can save some plain noodles for Nikolaj.”

“Thanks. Hey, do you want to watch-”

“ _Charles_ ,” Jake says, choked, and Charles turns to look at him, really look at him, for the first time. He’s freshly showered, despite the long day at the precinct, and dressed up in a nice jacket and dark-wash jeans. His hair has grown out a bit and Charles can pick out distinct curls and it’s just-

“You look, you look,” Charles stammers, “very beautiful, or, uh, or handsome. Very. Are you, uh, going out?”

“Charles,” Jake says again, takes his hand, but looks so hurt that Charles can’t help but make a small, helpless sound.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he says, demands, pleads, rubbing his thumb in circles over Jake’s palm in a way he hopes is soothing.

“I’ve been living here for months,” he says. “Six months.” Then adds, of nothing, “I thought you might rather stay in. But we can go out.”

“I don’t understand,” says Charles.

“At this point, I think I’ll do anything you could ever want,” Jake says, sounding annoyed with himself, and therefore more like himself, which brings Charles back to earth, lets him realize.

“Oh,” he says, and kisses him, touches him, hands petting at his hair, then cheeks, then chest. Rubs up and down his arms, moves one hand to his back, mouth to neck, teeth to pulse.

“I want - couch,” Jake says, lovely, _desperate_ , steering him out of the kitchen and settling matters so that Charles is sitting on the sofa and Jake is on top of him, straddling his lap, unbuckling his belt, biting at his shoulder, asking, “Can I? Can I?”

“Anything, anything,” Charles says, as if he’s granting a wish instead of begging, as if he hasn’t been drowning in this from the first touch, as if he’s not burning alive, burning, burning at Jake’s feet.

…

They don’t talk about it. 

They don’t talk about it for two weeks, but Charles thinks about it constantly, relives it, Jake’s touch, Jake’s hands, everything, everything.

But they don’t talk about it, until Jake says angrily, as if the words are bursting from him without permission, “I guess you’ve gotten pretty good at casual sex, huh?”

“What?”

“I mean, I’m the Gina in this scenario, right? No full Boyle for me. No accidental proposals.”

“Oh Jake, you’re a much better lover than my sister,” says Charles.

Jake throws his hands in the air and exhales sharply, pivots toward the door. “I can’t deal with this.”

“Wait, wait, please,” he says, _chants_ , “please, please, please, please.” He takes Jake’s hand, pulls him to the sofa, climbs to straddle his lap in a mirror of their position from weeks ago, presses his face to Jake’s cheek, grazes his body with his palms, corralling, gentling. “Shhh,” he says.

“I’m not judging you,” says Jake softly, hands creeping up the back of Charles’s shirt, digging in, holding on. “I’m very sex-positive. But I thought…”

“I know. But it’s complicated.”

“Complicated,” Jake repeats harshly. “Right.” He’s tensing up again and tomorrow Charles will have bruises where Jake is gripping him, pulling him closer, closer.

“I have a kid now. I can’t just… go full Boyle. It’s complicated. It’s one thing for Uncle Jake, papa’s friend to be living here. But it’s way too soon for a boyfriend to live with us. I can’t jump in with both feet right now. I wouldn’t even tell Nikolaj about dating someone until it was… serious. Or. Permanent.”

“I see,” Jake says, but he’s breathing out, going lax under Charles’s palms, pliable. “I’ve been thinking of moving out. Gina offered to rent me a room cheap for the sake of our long friendship. As long as I continue to amuse her.”

“Why didn’t you? This sofa is… not comfortable.”

“Maybe I like the company,” says Jake, into Charles’s neck, soft, vulnerable.

“I’d miss you living here. But I’d like. Dating. If you-”

“Yes. Dating.”

“And, uh, _exclusively_ , the dating, if you-”

“Yep!” Jake says, as the last of the tension bleeds away, and Charles can’t help laughing, hands in Jake’s hair, laughing, because-

“You are so, so -- I want to-,”

“Anything,” Jake says, “anything.”


End file.
